New Early Reader Books

The Bad Guys Do-You-Think-He-Saurus?! by Aaron Blabey goes back in time to the Jurassic era because, of course, dinosaurs, the perfect foils for this group.

The Sonoma County Library has one copy. This book will also be available at Strawberry's Scholastic Book Fair November 8-16, 2018.

Baby Monkey, Private Eye by Brian Selznick and David Serlin is a 192 page very beginning reader book. Baby Monkey solves three cases once he manages to put on his pants. The ending makes it a perfect bedtime read. Like Brian Selznick's previous work, much of the story is told in beautiful black and white drawings.
The Sonoma County Library has nine copies. This book will also be available at Strawberry's Scholastic Book Fair November 8-16, 2018.

Big Foot and Little Foot by Ellen Potter and illustrated by Felicita Sala is about how an unlikely friendship between a human boy, Boone, and a Sasquatch, Hugo. This is the first book in a series. The first chapter of The Monster Detector is included at the end of the book.
The Sonoma County Library has seven  copies.

Beatrice Zinker Upside Down Thinker: Incognito written and illustrated by Shelley Johannes is the second in a new series about Beatrice and her best friend, Lenny. It is the second week of third grade. The two friends have a great idea, Operation Upside. It is a plan to anonymously acknowledge people who are doing good things or are good at something. Beatrice gets a little ahead of herself and gives an upside to her teacher who is really good at being strict. Her teacher does not take it the way it was intended. How will they save Operation Upside?
The Sonoma County Library has two copies.

New York Times Notable Children's Books 2015

Looking for some picture books, middle grade books and/or young adult books to give as presents? Here are the New York Times recommendations for 2015. One of my very favorite books on the middle grade list is Roller Girl, a debut graphic novel by Victoria Jamieson.

Twelve year old Astrid and her best friend, Nicole, have always done everything together. Astrid signs up for Roller Derby Camp expecting Nicole to sign up, too. But Nicole decides to go to Dance Camp instead. A difficult summer follows as Astrid misses her friend, makes new derby friends and learns to be a tough roller girl. At the end of the summer, Nicole and Astrid decide they can do what they each love and still be best friends. Roller girls play under a pseudonym. Astrid chooses, Asteroid. It is amazing how creative the names can be. One of the Astrid's new friends chooses Slay Miserable.

The Sonoma County Library has eleven copies.

A big shout out to Krispy Kreme Her and Suzy Bonebreaker!

Time Magazine’s 100 Best Children’s Books of All Time

The list includes books we have reviewed here: Extra Yarn, Journey, The Day The Crayons Quit, The Snowy Day and Press Here. Where the Wild Things Are, The Cat in The Hat and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day and Madeline are also included. Since this is a list of picture books it is a puzzle as to why Out Of My Mind, a very worthy book, was on this list.

Picture Book Gift Ideas

2014 saw several  new picture books aimed at kids 4-7 years old by some honored picture book authors. The author and illustrator of a 2013 Caldecott Honor book, Extra Yarn, Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen have teamed up again on Sam & Dave Dig A Hole. A simple story about two boys digging a hole to look for something spectacular.   Some kids back in the olden days amused themselves during long summer days by digging holes either to bury or look for treasure or for the more ambitious, to dig their way to the other side of the world. While the story is told pretty straight, Jon Klassen’s illustrations are humorous. We can see what Sam and Dave cannot. Just as they are getting close to finding something, they change course. Fortunately, their dogs does dig his way to a spectacular find. The boys eventually fall down the hole and come out the other side. They decide that is a pretty spectacular way to spend the day.  The AR is 1.9.

Mac Barnett came out with another book this year  illustrated by Jen Corace. Telephone is a play on that  another amusement from the olden days. One person whispers something to another, that person whispers what he heard to the next person and the last person who hears it repeats the message aloud. More often than not, it bears little relationship to the original. The whole story takes place on a telephone wire, the characters are birds. Peter’s mother tells a cardinal carrying a baseball bat  “Tell Peter: Fly home for dinner”. The cardinal tells a flyboy, “Tell Peter: Hit pop flies and homers”. Flyboy passes his version to the next bird on the wire and so on. Each bird adds a twist to the message until finally a very drenched bird relays a message that combines parts of all the versions to a wise looking owl who happens to be sitting near Peter on the wire. The owl thinks about what he just heard and says to Peter, “Your Mom says fly home for dinner”.

 

Tom Lichtenheld, illustrator of Exclamation Mark, has teamed up with Richard T Morris on This Is A Moose.

An unseen director is making a wildlife movie about a moose. Take one: the star of the movie wants to be an astronaut.  This will not do. The director yells, “Cut!” and says matter of factually that a moose cannot be an astronaut. Take two is interrupted by the star’s grandmother (yeah grandmas!). She wanted to be a La Crosse goalie and don’t tell her a moose can’t be one or you have a fight on your hands. Take three is interrupted by a  Regal Giraffe who always wanted to be a doctor. The director dismisses the giraffe because this is a woodland movie not a safari movie. At this point Grandma and Regal Giraffe take matters into their own hands and launch Moose into space. The director goes into a tirade about how that cannot happen because this is a movie about a moose doing moose things. Nonetheless the Moose is in outer space. Finally, we see the director, who happens to be a duck, yelling, “will somebody please find me an animal that acts like it’s supposed to!!”  We see the director pausing to  think and coming to the realization that if a duck can be a director then a moose can be an astronaut . The new movie is “This is an Astronaut” on location on the moon.

Great read-a-loud book. The AR is 1.9.

Katherine Applegate, the winner of the 2013 Newbery Medal for The One And Only Ivan, has written a picture book about the real Ivan called Ivan: The Remarkable True Story of the Shopping Mall Gorilla. The book is beautifully illustrated by G. Brian Karas.

The story tells of Ivan’s birth in a tropical forest in Central Africa, his capture by poachers and his arrival in Tacoma, Washington. He was raised like a human child for three years until he became too big.  Then a cage in the shopping mall became his new home. He lived in that cage for 27 years without the company of another gorilla. Some people thought Ivan should have a better life. After letters, petitions and protests it was arranged to transfer Ivan to Zoo Atlanta. There he lived out his days in “a place with trees and grass and other gorillas”. The AR is 3.7.

NYPL Top Children’s Books of the Last 100 Years

The New York Public Library (NYPL) presented its first ever list of the Top Children’s Books of the Last 100 Years. Many of the books are no surprise: Cat in the Hat by Dr Seuss, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle and Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. Some have been featured on this blog: Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo, Holes by Louis Sacher and The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. There are books that I loved as a kid: Charlotte’s Web by E B White, Madeleine by Ludwig Bemelmans and The Hobbit by J R R Tolkien. A generation later my children loved: Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume, The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe by C S Lewis and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst. My grandchildren love: The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J K Rowling .  Check out the  complete list at School Library Journal.

Happy Children’s Book Week!

Children’s Book Week is the longest-running literacy initiative in the United States. This is the 94th annual celebration. This year’s poster is by Caldecott Medalist Brian Selznick, author of  The Houdini Box, The Invention of Hugo Cabret and Wonderstruck (see reviews here). Selznick’s artwork celebrates Maurice Sendak and Remy Charlip. Both authors died in 2012. Look for my review of a reissue of a book illustrated by Maurice Sendak and written by Janice May Urday in 1959 later this week.

 

Remy Charlip was a multi-talented man. As well as being a children’s book author and illustrator  he was a dancer, choreographer and a director at the National Theater for the Deaf and a founding director at the Merce Cunningham Dance Theatre. His books include:

He was also Brian Selznick’s model for the drawings of filmmaker Georges Melies in The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

100 Best Children’s Books for 2011

A group of librarians at the New York Public Library have posted a list of the best children’s books for 2011. A hundred year tradition (since 1911) the books are divided into seven categories: picture books, fairy and folk tales, early chapter books, chapter books, poetry, graphic novels and non-fiction. Here is one sample in each category:

Picture Books

This is the story of Jane Goodall as a child and her favorite toy chimpanzee named Jubilee. Jane dreams of some day “living with and helping all animals” until one day her dream comes true. The book is written by Patrick McDonnell the  Creator of the Mutts comic strip. There are several  copies of this book in the Sonoma County Library. Yulupa’s library has one copy.

 Folk and Fairy Tales

Nine tales of ancient Egypt are told comic-strip style. The Sonoma County Library has three copies of this book.

Early Chapter Books

Spunky tells this story because his humans, the Bates, do not speak dog. Due to a miscommunication, his family gives him a friend he is not so sure he wants. Our family loves books about (and by) dogs. The Sonoma County Library has several copies of this book.

Chapter Books

This should be no surprise. See the post on The Houdini Box below. The Sonoma County Library has many copies. The Yulupa library has one copy.

Poetry

More than 130 never-before-seen poems and drawings to delight all ages. The Sonoma County Library has several copies.

Graphic Novels

Superhero, Captain Amazing, is looking for a sidekick. His pets duke it out for the the honor. The Sonoma County Library has several copies.

Nonfiction

This is a book about one of the greatest friendships and greatest rivalries in our history. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were strong allies before and during the Revolution. They became political rivals, each seeing the role of government differently, during their service under President Washington. They became political enemies during their respective terms as President. After retirement, these two men commenced a written dialogue that lasted over a decade. And in one of the most spectacular coincidences in American history, they died within hours of each other on July 4, 1826. There is one copy in the Sonoma County Library.

The Houdini Box

While browsing through children’s books at Copperfield’s, looking for books for “a book on every bed”, I came across a book for older elementary kids called Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick. It is the story of two children,  Ben and Rose, separated in time by fifty years. Ben’s story is told in prose and Rose’s story is told in pictures. Their stories eventually intertwine. It was such an unique way of telling a story, I had to do some research on the author.

 

I found that he had received the Caldecott Medal for picture books in 2008 for a book that was 550 pages long. The Invention of Hugo Cabaret is about 12 year old Hugo who is an orphan clock keeper who lives in the walls of a Paris train station. Before his death, his father showed him a discarded automaton: a human-like figure seated at a desk, pen in hand, ready to write. Hugo’s father, a clockmaker, was trying to repair the robot. After his death, Hugo becomes obsessed with trying to get it to work. The story is told in prose and pictures which do not just illustrate the story but actually tell a good part of the story. The movie, Hugo, which is in current release is based on this book.

Meanwhile, on another trip to Copperfield’s, I find a book Brian Selznick wrote in 1991 called The Houdini Box. I have a son-in-law who has a a bit of an obsession with magic and I imagined him as the boy in this story. The boy’s name is Victor. He is ten and wants to be a magician too. He has read about Houdini’s magic tricks and he tries them at home but he cannot summon the magic to make them work. He locks himself in his grandmother’s train trunk but cannot escape no matter how many times he tries.

One day Victor is in the train station on the way to a weekend in the country when he spots Houdini and his wife. He runs up to Houdini and tells him he wants to be a magician and  asks him how to do the tricks he has been trying at home. Houdini promises to write him a letter with the answers. Victor waits for a reply and finally he gets a letter that says “A thousand secrets await you, come to my home” on a date that seemed impossibly in the future. Victor was impatient, so he went to Houdini’s home that evening, which happened to be Halloween. When he got there Mrs. Houdini thought he was trick or treating, but he showed her the letter. She disappeared and came back with a box and told him that Houdini had died that day. Victor took the box home and tried to open it. He noticed that the initials on the bottom of the box said E.W.; it was not Houdini’s box after all. So Victor put the box away and vowed to never think about Houdini again.

Years passed, he got married and had a son named Harry (a coincidence, I am sure). One day Victor and Harry were playing ball in a lot near the cemetery. Victor pitched the ball to Harry and Harry hit it into the cemetery. Father and son went to retrieve the ball. Perhaps by magic,  it had landed on Harry Houdini’s grave. Victor read the writing on the monument. It said HOUDINI and under that it said Ehrich Weiss: E.W. Before he was Houdini, the magician had been Ehrich Weiss. That night, after his wife and son had gone to bed Victor found the box. The lock had rusted and was easy to open. He locked himself in his grandmother’s trunk and escaped in under 20 seconds.

Legend has it that there actually was a Houdini Box. It was supposed to appear on the 100th anniversary of Houdini’s birth which was in 1974. At the end of the book is a brief biography of Harry Houdini, a magic trick and a little about the process of writing the book. Mr. Selznick also includes a list of books written about Houdini for children.

This book is appropriate for a child from 6-11 who is fascinated by magic.